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Amy Allocco earns New Scholar Award

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Distinguished Emerging Scholar Amy Allocco was recognized as the second-place winner of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award.

Amy Allocco, an Elon University assistant professor in the Department Religious Studies, was recently recognized at the 2013 American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings in Baltimore.

Allocco was named the second-place winner of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion's Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award, which she earned for an article published in the journal earlier this year.

Titled “From Survival to Respect: The Narrative Performances and Ritual Authority of a Female Hindu Healer,” the article draws on ethnographic fieldwork that Allocco conducted in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In the article, Allocco analyzes the discursive strategies that a female Hindu healer named Valliyammal employs to create and maintain her ritual authority in both her domestic shrine and in public temple spaces, where she occupies a religious leadership role that is unusual for single women.

A panel of feminist scholars from the journal's editorial board selects the winners of the award, which the group says was established "in order to encourage and give recognition to the emerging voices of new scholars, whose research and insights will shape the future of feminist studies in religion." The journal is the oldest interdisciplinary, inter-religious feminist academic journal in religious studies and is published twice annually.

"This award is particularly meaningful to me because the journal is the leading venue for feminist research in our field, and has been particularly personally inspiring to me as I have trained in religious studies, as far back as my undergraduate years at Colgate University," Allocco said.